Country of My Skull

In the year following South Africa’s first democratic elections, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to investigate human rights abuses committed under the apartheid regime. Presided over by God’s own diplomat, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the first hearings of the commission were held in April 1996. During the following two years of hearings, South Africans were daily exposed to revelations and public testimony about their traumatic past, and–like the world that looked on–continued to discover that the relationship between truth and reconciliation is far more complex than they had ever imagined.
Antjie Krog, a prominent South African poet and journalist, led the South African Broadcasting Corporation team that for two years reported daily on the hearings. Extreme forms of torture, abuse, and state violence were the daily fare of the Truth Commission. Many of those involved with its proceedings, including Krog herself, suffered personal stresses–ill health, mental breakdown, dissolution of relationships–in the face of both the relentless onslaught of the truth and the continuing subterfuges of unrelenting perpetrators. Like the Truth Commission itself, Country of My Skull gives central prominence to the power of the testimony of the victims, combining a journalist’s reportage skills with the poet’s ability to give voice to stories previously unheard. –Rachel Holmes–This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

This wrenching book tells the vital story of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the body charged with exploring human rights violations in the apartheid past and with recommending amnesty and reparations. Krog, a poet who covered the TRC’s two years of hearings as a radio reporter, presents a national (and personal) process of catharsis, cobbling together transcripts of testimony, reportage and personal meditations. The TRC, headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, gave voice to the anguished, often eloquent stories of numerous victims of apartheid, most – but not all of whom were black. It put faces on stealthy killers and torturers seeking amnesty. And while it exposed the evil of the apartheid state, it did not ignore the dirty hands of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress or of his ex-wife, Winnie. Krog?who, like some other journalists covering the TRC, experienced psychological strain?presents Tutu and the TRC as heroic.

While her partisanship is mostly excusable, this book has other flaws: published last year in South Africa, it lacks analysis of the TRC’s October 1998 report and recommendations. More troubling are Krog’s somewhat muddled meditations on the slippery nature of truth and narrative and her implication that small falsehoods are permissible?even necessary?for the discernment of a larger truth. While Country of My Skull shows evidence of an enduring racial divide, its ultimate hopefulness counterpoints Rian Malan’s powerfully pessimistic My Traitor’s Heart (1990). In both books, Afrikaner authors, members of the tribe that instituted apartheid, seek a place in their tortured, beloved country.

Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Krog, a poet and the parliamentary editor for South African Broadcasting Corporation radio, has written a remarkable, moving, often painful account of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sought to reconcile warring parties from the apartheid era. Krog covered the commission’s hearings, beginning in 1996. In this work, a combination of reportage, memoir, and moral tract, she describes the tortuous path of the commission as it heard perpetrators as well as victims in an attempt to heal the gaping wounds of South Africa’s past. A compelling account, beautifully written, with a very helpful glossary for the uninitiated, this cathartic read is highly recommended for all major libraries.?Anthony O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, IN

Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
The perpetrators of apartheid cry witch-hunt; the bystanders say they didn’t know, and even if they did, they had no power to change it; but the voices of the victims drown out the rhetoric and squabbling and make South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission of lasting significance. Krog is a fine Afrikaans poet who reported on the hearings. For two years, she traveled around the country with the commission that was presided over by Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, listening to ordinary people tell their stories of terror, torture, massacre, and lasting sorrow. She weaves together the victims’ stories with her own responses as listener, writer, Afrikaner. She agonizes over whether she is exploiting people’s suffering by shaping it into a story.

At times, her personal meanderings and the reports of the political infighting about amnesty and reparations are banal and boring. And yet, we need that messy background to distance the tearing truth of homes invaded and bodies blasted. In Krog’s powerful narrative, “the unspeakable is spoken and translated.” Hazel Rochman–This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews
This searing examination is a compelling achievement that considers the nature of guilt, shame, and forgiveness in post-apartheid South Africa, yet also sometimes feels exactly like what it isa series of clumsily stitched-together news reports. For more than two years, South African radio reporter and esteemed poet Krog covered the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions investigations into crimes committed on all sides in the name of apartheid. Headed by the Nobel Prizewinning Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the commission held out the promise of complete amnesty, but only in return for complete honesty about each and every offense.

Hearings were held all around the country, with victims and their families able to confront their torturers. The testimony was painfully riveting, and Krog includes vast, uninterpolated swaths of accounts of bombings, beatings, rapes, and murder squads. She details expertly the effects of such terrible revelations on white South Africans, most of whom had never thought (or wanted to think) about the true cost of sustaining apartheid; what had once seemed to them like standard-issue authoritarianism eventually was viewed as unmitigated evil, reminiscent of nothing so much as Nazi Germany. Although the Truth Commission itself has been criticized for a relatively lenient treatment of the African National Congress, Krog is not blind to the anti-apartheid oppositions own multifarious brutalities.

“This is a deeply moving account of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission–South Africa’s attempt to come to terms with her often horrendous past. Antjie Krog writes with the sensitivity of a poet and the clarity of a journalist. Country of My Skull is a must-read for all who are fascinated by this unique attempt to deal with a post-conflict context. It is a beautiful and powerful book.”
— Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“Trying to understand the new South Africa without the Truth and Reconciliation Commission would be futile; trying to understand the commission without this book would be irresponsible.”
— André Brink, author of A Dry White Season

Antjie Krog has rendered the world a great service. This elegant manifesto for justice will haunt the soul long after the reading is done.”
— Douglas Brinkley, professor of history and director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans

“Here is the extraordinary reportage of one who, eyes staring into the filthiest places of atrocity, poet’s searing tongue speaking of them, is not afraid to go too far. Antjie Krog breaks all the rules of dispassionate recounts, the restraints of ‘decent’ prose, because this is where the truth might be reached and reconciliation with it is posited like a bewildered angel thrust down into hell.”
— Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature — Review

Review
“One of the best books of the year.”
—The Economist

“This is a deeply moving account of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission–South Africa’s attempt to come to terms with her often horrendous past. Antjie Krog writes with the sensitivity of a poet and the clarity of a journalist. Country of My Skull is a must-read for all who are fascinated by this unique attempt to deal with a post-conflict context. It is a beautiful and powerful book.”
— Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“Trying to understand the new South Africa without the Truth and Reconciliation Commission would be futile; trying to understand the commission without this book would be irresponsible.”
— André Brink, author of A Dry White Season

Antjie Krog has rendered the world a great service. This elegant manifesto for justice will haunt the soul long after the reading is done.”
— Douglas Brinkley, professor of history and director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans

“Here is the extraordinary reportage of one who, eyes staring into the filthiest places of atrocity, poet’s searing tongue speaking of them, is not afraid to go too far. Antjie Krog breaks all the rules of dispassionate recounts, the restraints of ‘decent’ prose, because this is where the truth might be reached and reconciliation with it is posited like a bewildered angel thrust down into hell.”
— Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Product Description
Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. Repressive laws mandating separation of the races were thrown out. The country, which had been carved into a crazy quilt that reserved the most prosperous areas for whites and the most desolate and backward for blacks, was reunited. The dreaded and dangerous security force, which for years had systematically tortured, spied upon, and harassed people of color and their white supporters, was dismantled. But how could this country–one of spectacular beauty and promise–come to terms with its ugly past? How could its people, whom the oppressive white government had pitted against one another, live side by side as friends and neighbors?

To begin the healing process, Nelson Mandela created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by the renowned cleric Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Established in 1995, the commission faced the awesome task of hearing the testimony of the victims of apartheid as well as the oppressors. Amnesty was granted to those who offered a full confession of any crimes associated with apartheid. Since the commission began its work, it has been the central player in a drama that has riveted the country. In this book, Antjie Krog, a South African journalist and poet who has covered the work of the commission, recounts the drama, the horrors, the wrenching personal stories of the victims and their families. Through the testimonies of victims of abuse and violence, from the appearance of Winnie Mandela to former South African president P. W. Botha’s extraordinary courthouse press conference, this award-winning poet leads us on an amazing journey.

Country of My Skull captures the complexity of the Truth Commission’s work. The narrative is often traumatic, vivid, and provocative. Krog’s powerful prose lures the reader actively and inventively through a mosaic of insights, impressions, and secret themes. This compelling tale is Antjie Krog’s profound literary account of the mending of a country that was in colossal need of change.

From the Inside Flap
Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. Repressive laws mandating separation of the races were thrown out. The country, which had been carved into a crazy quilt that reserved the most prosperous areas for whites and the most desolate and backward for blacks, was reunited. The dreaded and dangerous security force, which for years had systematically tortured, spied upon, and harassed people of color and their white supporters, was dismantled. But how could this country–one of spectacular beauty and promise–come to terms with its ugly past? How could its people, whom the oppressive white government had pitted against one another, live side by side as friends and neighbors?

To begin the healing process, Nelson Mandela created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by the renowned cleric Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Established in 1995, the commission faced the awesome task of hearing the testimony of the victims of apartheid as well as the oppressors. Amnesty was granted to those who offered a full confession of any crimes associated with apartheid. Since the commission began its work, it has been the central player in a drama that has riveted the country. In this book, Antjie Krog, a South African journalist and poet who has covered the work of the commission, recounts the drama, the horrors, the wrenching personal stories of the victims and their families. Through the testimonies of victims of abuse and violence, from the appearance of Winnie Mandela to former South African president P. W. Botha’s extraordinary courthouse press conference, this award-winning poet leads us on an amazing journey.

Country of My Skull captures the complexity of the Truth Commission’s work. The narrative is often traumatic, vivid, and provocative. Krog’s powerful prose lures the reader actively and inventively through a mosaic of insights, impressions, and secret themes. This compelling tale is Antjie Krog’s profound literary account of the mending of a country that was in colossal need of change.

From the Back Cover
“One of the best books of the year.”
—The Economist

“This is a deeply moving account of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission–South Africa’s attempt to come to terms with her often horrendous past. Antjie Krog writes with the sensitivity of a poet and the clarity of a journalist. Country of My Skull is a must-read for all who are fascinated by this unique attempt to deal with a post-conflict context. It is a beautiful and powerful book.”
— Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“Trying to understand the new South Africa without the Truth and Reconciliation Commission would be futile; trying to understand the commission without this book would be irresponsible.”
— André Brink, author of A Dry White Season

Antjie Krog has rendered the world a great service. This elegant manifesto for justice will haunt the soul long after the reading is done.”
— Douglas Brinkley, professor of history and director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans

“Here is the extraordinary reportage of one who, eyes staring into the filthiest places of atrocity, poet’s searing tongue speaking of them, is not afraid to go too far. Antjie Krog breaks all the rules of dispassionate recounts, the restraints of ‘decent’ prose, because this is where the truth might be reached and reconciliation with it is posited like a bewildered angel thrust down into hell.”
— Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

About the AuthorAntjie Krog was born in Kroonstad, South Africa. She has published eight volumes of poetry. Her first prose work, Account of a Murder, was published in 1995. She received the Pringle Award for excellence in journalism for her reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She is currently parliamentary editor for South African Broadcasting Company radio. She lives with her husband and four children in Cape Town.